Alleged nude photos of multiple celebrities leaked online

PHOENIX -- Most of us were looking forward to a quiet Labor Day weekend, but that was blown apart for several female celebrities Sunday afternoon after a hacker released alleged nude photos.

While it is unknown how the photos were obtained, what is known is they began popping up on 4chan, a popular image-based website, about 4 p.m. The post spread like wildfire online.

Some cybersecurity experts speculated that the hacker or hackers may have obtained a cache of private celebrity images by exploiting weaknesses in an online image-storing platform.

"It is important for celebrities and the general public to remember that images and data no longer just reside on the device that captured it," security researcher Ken Westin wrote in a blog post Monday. "Once images and other data are uploaded to the cloud, it becomes much more difficult to control who has access to it, even if we think it is private."

However, a statement from Apple said its popular iCloud storage was not compromised in a statement. The tech giant said the hackers likely targeted specific accounts rather than the entire cloud.